In memory of Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. who alerted me that Man is God at Yale.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

* Chappaquiddick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Does Money Talk?

Let's assume that the arrest of the president of the International Monetary Fund on charges of raping a maid in a Manhattan hotel are NOT a political entrapment by his rivals for the presidency of France.

Let's assume that he, like Senator Edward Kennedy in the drunk-driving death of Mary Jo Kopechne, is guilty, even though it is contrary to American justice to make such a presumption before proof of guilt is established..

At the time of the Chappaquiddick incident, (when Mr. Kennedy drove his car off a wooden bridge on the Chappaquiddick section of Martha's Vineyard after a night of partying in which he apparently did not realize the young woman, Mary Joe Kopechne, had previously entered his car and passed out on the floor of the back seat, and therefore did not realize she was in need of rescuing when he abandoned his half-submerged car and walked to the nearby hotel) it was whispered that Kennedy-lawyers were approaching the Kopechne family behind-the-scenes to insure that a lawsuit for Civil damages was never filed.

Translation: to offer millions of dollars of hush money to the bereaved family to protect Mr. Kennedy's career. (which, given his subsequent service to the country in the Senate, was certainly worth protecting)

I have never seen reports of whether such hush money was ever offered, existed, or paid.

Given the similarity not in the nature of the alleged crimes (Kennedy was charged with "leaving the scene of an accident) but in the international attention brought to the allegations because of their respective fames, one must wonder now whether the lawyers of Dominque Strauss-Kahn are not doing some kind of logistcal dance to make themselves "available" to the lawyers of the accuser in the hotel rape.

Would it not be attractive for a two million dollar trust fund to be established for the family of the accuser by an anonymous third party?

Perhaps the accuser's story might change in ways which would be beneficial to the accused. perhaps a lapse of memory? Or contradictory statements?

I am not a lawyer, and not very citified, so I do not know how such things might be arranged. And of course, the Kennedy lawyers had hundreds of millions of dollars, the Strauss Kahn lawyers may only have a few million.

I know one thing for sure, there was absolute silence from the Kopechne family after the initial weeks following Chappaquiddick.